Volume 6, Afterword

Volume 6, Afterword

Volume 6!!

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

This series is always a battle against the ballooning page numbers, but it finally got so thick it had to be split in two. I hope the content is strong enough to warrant that thickness, but I’ll leave that judgment up to all of you.

My goal this time was to see how intense of a battle I could write while sticking to the Intellectual Village style, so you might have seen some scenes that felt a little different from normal.

About Chapter 1.

It looks like it’s going to be a pretty standard case of solving the Package’s mystery, but then an unexpected supernatural battle breaks out between elementary school kids. I had always planned for Yonesaki Hiro’s home to be an antique shop filled with object-related Youkai, but I didn’t manage to put it in Volume 2. I was glad I got to show it here in a big way.

A boy wanting to put his life on the line for the girl he’s fallen for is something that only works in fiction, but I think it’s boys of that age that long for that kind of thing the most. An impure adult would never be able to say they wouldn’t lose because their feelings for the girl were stronger than anyone else’s.

The best point of this chapter was impure Jinnai Shinobu’s sleazy school life and his nervous homeroom teacher who was forced to wear bloomers in class with a dead look in her eyes.

About Chapter 2.

Neko Manma comes from my own preferences. I like the dish, but it unfortunately isn’t popular enough to have a chain of restaurants in the real world. Coming up with these fictional services and best sellers is one of my favorite parts of Intellectual Village.

As a police officer, Uchimaku Hayabusa doesn’t need a setup to be involved in a murder. He doesn’t need a landslide on a rainy day blocking the road and trapping him in the mansion where the murder happens. He’s sent out to the scene of the crime, which is convenient for writing the start of the story.

But unlike with Shinobu or Mai, he is required to help people equally and evenly. To emphasize that this time, I had him rescuing some old folks living in illegal apartments. Yes, the exact opposite of a cute girl. After being abandoned by everyone, the old people had given up on their own lives, but Hayabusa still naturally wanted to save them. I hope you enjoyed seeing that stance of his.

I love writing the stupid conversations between Uchimaku and Sotobori because I can just empty my head. And while Hachikawa Tomoe showed up in those conversations, her embarrassment isn’t from pure love. It’s more from a sense of seeing her father in Uchimaku. Hmm, that might actually make it as troublesome as Sotobori was saying.

The villain’s name was Yamame, which is a type of Youkai. A Yamame is a beautiful version of a Yamanba, but while the Yamanba does good and bad things, the Yamame attacks and kills people 100% of the time.

About Chapter 3.

The more silent someone is, the more of a romantic they are on the inside. ...Well, that’s one of the basics of character creation. Shoving money in a donation box, rescuing the family in the restaurant, or otherwise helping out people who have nothing to do with the case while still going on a rampage is another one of the basics.

I made this all about the Illness Magic User so you could enjoy his transcendent battles. This may have been the closest to what you all think of when you hear of a “Kamachi Kazuma story”. And after seeing this, I think you’ll see why Hishigami Mai knows she could never get along with him. Mai likes to humor people, raise them up before dropping them, betray them, fill them with doubt, and otherwise eliminate the enemy forces before the battle even begins, but that would never work with a samurai character who charges straight in regardless of the situation.

At the same time, this is the guy who bared his fangs against Hyakki Yakou’s leader and slaughtered the civilian hotel workers in Volume 1. It might be fun to imagine just how cornered he had to have felt leading up to that.

The secret protagonist of this chapter was the Oomukade. I also made him quite the romantic. I’ve written several characters willing to risk their life for their friend, but was I being too innovative when I had him willing to let that friend eat his organs?

For the Aoandon, I originally thought an oni girl should have two horns because it’s cute, but I ended up going with a single horn for a number of reasons. But since she used that hypnotic phosphorescence to deceive Ranzono Sachi, I can see now that a single horn really was the only option.

Saiki Kazu has grown a lot more aggressive since his composed appearance in Volume 4, but you should be able to tell why if you see how Ranzono Sachi was acting in this chapter. When he was recruited, she seemed to be acting kindly, but she was actually saying things that tore into his heart.

About Chapter 4.

This was Uchimaku Hayabusa’s great escape through Tokyo. In reality, hijacking the TV or internet to provoke a criminal will get you thrown in jail regardless of any other crimes (just like sting operations aren’t allowed, getting a criminal to commit a crime is illegal), but this is fiction!

PSI_ver_RAIN is an idol born from a different approach than Tarot Girls 22. Video sites, PVs, and downloaded broadcasts. To be honest, I don’t know all that much about this new movement putting pressure on the TV industry, but that’s why it all seems so amazing and why I wanted to put plenty of that strange new world in here.

But the real important part wasn’t Uchimaku himself. It was Shinobu and the others watching through the TV. They were content to cheer on their uncle since it was just something on TV, but in the very end...well, I don’t have to explain it all to you.

And as I was writing Tsumada Mio, she left my original expectations and went on a bit of rampage. That really surprised me. And she even rubbed Hayabusa’s head. She didn’t show up for very long, but I feel like she stole the show away from PSI_ver_RAIN. ...Ahh, I want to make her a regular character.

Next time will be the beginning of the head-on war between Hyakki Yakou’s Top Five and the Aandon, Archdemon Tselika, Saiki Kazu, and the rest. The connections with Ranzono Sachi and the Byouki user will come into play too. What will happen to the Hishigami Sisters, Uchimaku Hayabusa, and Sotobori who has a surprising connection to Saiki? And with his small world destroyed by those adults, what will the boy named Jinnai Shinobu protect, what will he choose, and what can he do? I hope you’re looking forward to it.

I give my thanks to my illustrator Mahaya-san and my editors Miki-san, Onodera-san, and Anan-san. A single centipede is bad enough, but there was a whole bunch of them. There was also the gathering of the Top Five, Archdemon Tselika’s true appearance, and plenty of other difficult things. I am truly thankful that you all have stuck with me instead of just giving up.

And I give my thanks to the readers. I think this volume had a lot of physical battles but also a lot of psychological conflict. What did you think of it? This series has gotten a lot of characters now too, so the different lines of interest and emotion have grown pretty complex. Still, I hope you will stick with me.

And I will end this here.

I think the manliest one of all was the Oomukade.

-Kamachi Kazuma